


Goodbye, Semi-Sparkling Girl

by enmity



Category: Persona 2, Persona Series
Genre: F/F, Pre-Series, Resentment
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-20
Updated: 2018-12-20
Packaged: 2019-09-23 13:10:16
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 999
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17080931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/enmity/pseuds/enmity
Summary: How Maya and Ulala became roommates.





	Goodbye, Semi-Sparkling Girl

**Author's Note:**

> part 2 of [this](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16886091)? maybe

They don’t go to the same college. Ulala drifts through university life the same way she drifts through most everything else. She lets the wind carry her in whatever direction and smiles when she gives into its pull. She floats through classes alright. She goes to parties. She makes friends; her roommate’s nice, though she can’t say she likes the boyfriend. She goes out with five guys, six, breaks up with just as many though for not a lack of trying, and at some point the tally starts becoming kind of maybe  _really_  pathetic, so she just stops counting.  _Whatever_ , she thinks, frowns at the screen, and deletes the text message. Turns off her phone for the rest of the night so the alarm won’t ring and she’ll sleep through her morning class.

She thinks about Maya sometimes. She still has the pictures, tacked on that silly pink styrofoam board hung up in her dorm room. Here is them, at the karaoke box. Here, celebrating her seventeenth (Ulala tripped on her heels three seconds later and had to be consoled for an hour). Here is Maya and her lackey, drab brown hair and artificially lengthened lashes next to glossy black locks and sunbeam grin, holding flowers and their diplomas and each other’s hands as the trees explode with pink behind them. Ulala looks at the photograph as she’s drying her hair on a night Emi’s out on a date and thinks some days her nineteen-year-old self’s smile looks more genuine than others. Beautiful, perhaps, if she feels inclined to believe it (she doesn’t). But the difference between beautiful and pretty matters less than the difference between a girl you’ll look thrice at and a girl you’ll look at once and then dump after the third date, and there’s no starker example of the divide than the fraying Polaroid she’s got tacked to the wall and can’t look away from without knowing why. No; no, of course she knows why. She slips into her pajamas and thinks about Maya and stares into the ceiling fan until she falls asleep wondering if she still remembers the way Ulala used to elongate the vowels of her name and insist it counted as a nickname. Probably not. Who’s she kidding?

She gains a few years. Her job’s paycheck is lousy but she’s moving up (hopefully). Emi gets married – congrats, Hiroshi – and she brings a giftwrapped toaster to the baby shower. She saves up enough to find a better place and holds off without knowing why. The days turn into weeks that pass uneventfully. She doesn’t think of Maya for a long time – okay, two months – until one day she brings home an edition of Coolest still in translucent plastic along with her monthly groceries and it’s two nights later when she’s skimming the first dozen pages with variety TV humming dully in the background that she catches the name  _Amano Maya_  creasing beneath her fingernail at the end of an article about some teen pop star, and feels like a glass of water being overturned. She shoves the magazine under some newspapers and falls asleep against the cushions with the channel tuned to some eyesore of a game show. She thinks she’ll maybe paint her nails purple tomorrow. She’s a working adult; she can afford one salon appointment.

She thinks about Maya. It’s easy to do it, path of least resistance and Ulala’s never not taken them. She thinks about her bright smile and lilting laugh and the way she’d touch her ear when she’s deep in thought. Thinks about the jealousy and undeserved jabs and how Ulala could’ve stood to be kinder except Ma-ya was the kindest girl she knew and she always laughed with Ulala even when she was laughing at her, and what kind of best friend ever did that? She tells herself that’s why she still has her contact number and why she never follows up on her self-given ultimatums to pick up the thing and dial already. What could she say? It’s been a while. How are you? I’m twenty-three with a crap job and I need someone to split the rent with me. Yes. Yes, I’m still jealous of you. Thanks for understanding.

“Sure,” Maya replies cheerfully, then excuses herself for a moment – she just found a typo that needs fixing – then tucks her phone between her shoulder and ear and says, “I’m so glad you called. I've been meaning to move out too.”

Ulala can feel her smile from the other end of the line. “Great,” she says and doesn’t smile back. Great. Something in her chest constricts, and for once she’s glad she’s had years of practice muddying the line between alarm and infatuation. The confusion over which is which is enough to make her forget that this feeling isn’t unfamiliar at all. Not when it comes to the girl-now-woman laughing over the phone, the clicking sound of keys audible in the background as she says sorry, but “I've really gotta get this article done by morning. Goodnight, Ulala,” and cuts the call.

And Ulala sits in her room for a long time afterwards, sorting through pictures of herself in her photobook, finding Maya’s shadow in each one and wondering if she’d rather run her fingertips down them and fondly reminiscence over the moments frozen in time or if she’d just as much wish to see her pathetic teenage self burn down in the conflagration that’s eaten away her self-esteem and anything else that bears repeating. Really, Maya’s just another match she’s thrown into the gasoline tank. It makes no real difference to her if Maya was the start of the fire. It doesn’t mean anything.

(It isn’t true, of course. But the next day Ulala takes the bus to Aoba and waves at Maya across the pristine Kismet lobby and when she smiles and says, "I’m glad to see you again," pulling her friend into a hug, she has to try and believe it.)


End file.
